Column: Apple could learn from past mistakes

I guess Steve Jobs being kicked out of the company and a bunch of MBAs who didn't know their heads from their behinds running the company had nothing to do with the decline. Not to mention any number of less obvious contributing factors that undoubtedly came into play, even unpleasant ones like Microsoft's business acumen.

Talk about a myopic, self-serving view of Apple's history just to make a woefully simplistic analogy about Apple's current dominance of the portable music player market being similar their early dominance of the home computer market. I'm so tired of talking heads blathering out some off-the-cuff proclamation just because the dimmest flicker of electricity actually managed to flit across some of their neurons producing a temporary delusion of profundity. Of course actually examining some of these issues might have more revelatory power than the tidy little piece of fluff writing linked above. Must have something to do with the real world not being tidy.

...but tdellos nailed it.

She's got a lot of experience with Macs, doesn't she.
Yet (even before ipod) Jobs was, what, 15th wealthiest dude on the continent.
The clueless reporting for the clueless.

Hey, someone already wrote this article, uhh, every year for the past 20 years.

Dummy.

The music industry is about to hand out one hell of an ass kicking to Apple, which may result in a complete shut out. Apple may be relegated to starting its own record company to keep labels from pressuring them into pricing models that return to the days over greedy profits and no future for artists. However, the archives will be lost if only new Apple branded music can come through.

I worry every day about the content of this article. Steve does have a history of playing it strong at the right "beginning" times and blowing it by staying tough when he should compromise. Some of you might remember the chance Steve had to sell the NeXT OS to IBM, but tried to bully them into submission. Windows would have been a memory, not NeXT. He played hard, and lost the deal.

Disney has now created its own animation house, and although more than a decade behind in current technolgies and talent, it won't take but a fraction of that time to catch up. Steve needs to learn how to get along with all the kids. It doesn't mean he can't continue to "control" them. It just means he's going to have to learn how to talk to fans. ;-)

I'm tired of reading headlines like this. They just do it to get their name out there. It's the same as a new consultant or firm claiming to have found a vulnerability in OSX every month. News sites run the story and mention their name and they likely get a lot of work out of it.

Apple did learn from past mistakes and allowed iTunes and the iPod to work with Windows. And look at them now. Nothing else comes close to being as cool or selling as well. They've also lowered their prices to compete with PC's and came up with the Mac mini. The Apple of the late 80's wouldn't have compromised like that and that's why they got into trouble.

The music labels could all pull off iTunes tomorrow-
see their sales drop like a rock (remember the iPod has about 70% of the portable market) and Apple would ramp up the indy business and be the destination for all the cool cats- while concentrating on the next big thing: video.
No one seems to realize that they are selling "Lost" for $2 a pop when you can watch it and record it for free at a higher resolution.
What happens when they offer "The Sopranos" direct- and I don't have to buy cable, plus the digital tier plus HBO?
Can we say they become the ultimate middle man?
Apple is seeing Mac share rise right now- from 3% to 5% of the market- they had record sales- and their stock is cruising.
Apple doesn't have anything to worry about- as long as the switch to Intel processors goes smoothly.

Wow...so Apple is doing good now, so therefore they can never fail? How ludicrous is that thinking? Every record executive has now come out publicly and said, "We're about to whoop Apple's ass if they don't concede." Numbers were just released on what percentage of iTunes makes up the overall sales of music....its below 20%. What loss are they going to experience if Apple bullies the record labels into dropping them? Think about the 10s of MILLIONS of iPods with NO CONTENT. Enjoy your Lost video guys! because that's all you're going to be able to do with your $399 toys.

I think the only thing sadder than folks who write chicken little articles like this one, are the folks that shamelessly support notions that minor successes constitutes a privilege to behave in any fashion they wish.

I personally think Steve is doing the right thing pushing for $.99 fixed prices. It's impulsive, profitable, and the artists really make a decent amount of money. Videos at $2 is a great price. However, if every single record company disagrees with you, and they really have you by the balls, you have to compromise. End of story.

I believe Steve has learned this lesson. It will be interesting to see how he surprises all of us.

Source Owen Linzymier Apple 2.0 author??? Self serving, yeah, so you'll buy the book...so you'll be outraged and click - ad's...
If Apple doesn't make money on iTunes, so what if they aren't allowed to sell it!! 99% is not from there, Apple makes zero selling tunes, just for iPod owners who want to pay! ( What do you think we put on them? 60 gigs of paid for AAC ? )

Yeah, wonder what happens when you don't fire the founder after doing a "Good Job" on a product. Wonder what happens when you don't let soda pop salesman invent PDA's & run Apple to the ground.... Wonder how Gates competes with Steve... Pass the popcorn!

mlowe's an idiot for saying:

"What loss are they going to experience if Apple bullies the record labels into dropping them? Think about the 10s of MILLIONS of iPods with NO CONTENT. Enjoy your Lost video guys! because that's all you're going to be able to do with your $399 toys."

Considering that iPod owners only download a very minor amount of songs from the iTunes store, out of the grand total of what they have on their iPods (ever heard of CDs?), I doubt very much that mlowe's prediction even has a chance of success... Sounds like you're qualified to sit in a cubicle, and 'analyse' the market.

This isn't to say that the threat of the record companies isn't wihout merit, but considering this is an industry not known for taking risks, and yanking the content from Apple *IS* a risk, I doubt very much any CEO wants to be the one to cause an instant 20% loss in a given quarter.